It's Silent, Not Taciturn
by Twi14
Summary: "I have only three questions", Lexaeus said. "Why will no one in the worlds go outside anymore? Why are you relying the Keyblade wielders to protect you? And for the love of God, why is the largest company in Twilight Town a hair gel manufacturer?"
1. Chapter 1

It's_ Silent_, Not Taciturn

Taking the cloak was probably a bad idea.

Lord knows the Organization had attracted enough animosity to warrant it. There were more than a few worlds where wearing anything remotely black or hooded would get you shot/stabbed/clawed/laser blasted to within an inch of your life.

Notice he said "life". Others may have insisted on the term "nonexistence" in that previous sentence, but Lexaeus was firmly of the opinion that such vulgarities of grammar only made the members of the Organization sound more melodramatic then they already did. You'd think that they'd start bursting into flames when they got angry or som-

Oh. Right.

Mercifully, there was no one in the lab sufficiently awake enough to ignite, figuratively or not. The founding members of the mighty Organization XIII were passed out in approximately the positions they had been in when Ansem- or Xehanort, or Terra, or whatever he was choosing to call himself these days, had plunged all their hearts into darkness.

Wait, wait. He didn't have to think like that anymore. He could dispense with the corny, elaborate, euphemisms involving darkness and the pain of nonbeing.

_Thank God._

Ahem. The founding members of the mighty Organization XIII were passed out in the positions they had been in when Ansem- or Xehanort, or Terra, or whatever he was choosing to call himself these days, had broken the containment seals on the lab doors, allowing a ravening horde of Neoshadows inside to steal their hearts and then eat their other, less metaphorical hearts.

Lexaeus smiled grimly as he stuffed the cloak in a bag and began rifling through Xaldin's pockets. The Silent Hero may have always been (reasonably) courteous to his fellow organization members, but he also had a long memory. And Xaldin (Or Dilan, or-you know what, forget about it) was notorious for being a tad… unethical with the Organization's munny supply. Rumor had it that he had gotten several members to mortgage _their own weapons _as collateral for the interest rates he charged. Not that he would have been foolish enough to do something like that, of course. He had been sleeping on the floor _completely_ by his own choice.

He found nothing of interest on Xaldin, aside from a suspiciously large number of peanut bags and a tin of lance polish.

Peanuts- that's how bad it had gotten towards the end. Stuck inside the lab for weeks on end, Heartless of their own creation battering at the doors, Even insisting that he was only hours away from a breakthrough while Dilan and Braig fought for the last scraps of food anyone could find. He'd encouraged Ienzo to write to take his mind away from everything, not realizing that he was meticulously tallying how much of Ansem they could eat before they would die from darkness poisoning. The child had _graphs_.

No, he didn't particularly feel guilty about from theft from this wonderful group of sadists.

He was leaving this world (by gummi ship- the dark corridors were horrendously easy to intercept, as Demyx once discovered when he reached in to grab his sitar and accidentally groped Larxene as she portaled out of the shower, and then she- but that is a story for another day.). He was going to find his family, assuming their world was one of the ones that the miscellaneous spiky haired teenagers had saved.

And then he would go and slap Aeleus Sr. in the face for suggesting that he go to Radiant Garden to "do _something_" to help the family pay the bills-no, he wouldn't. He would hug Aaron and apologize for letting a manipulative twelve year-old replace his little brother.

Lexaeus glanced down at Ienzo, slumbering peacefully, looking almost innocent, and softened slightly. He knelt next to him and whispered "You're going to have to do your own fighting from now on." Which was all very well and good, except Ienzo couldn't actually hear him. So he decided to punctuate the point. He drew Skysplitter and carefully drove it into the floor next to Ienzo's head. With any luck, it would be first thing he saw when he woke. With a great deal of luck, the unnaturally sharp blade would stay embedded there, and the scientists would have to continually navigate around a giant ax in the floor.

He walked out of the lab several minutes later; squinting as his eyes frantically attempted to remember what "sunlight" was and failed miserably. As such, his planned triumphant march out the door was more of a stagger, which abruptly turned into a fall-down several flights of stairs-after he tripped over the door frame.

But as the enormous man got up with a surprising amount of grace and continued his ponderous way down the street, some say that there was a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips.

_Good morning, Radiant Garden._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Blasted Gelatin**

There were a number of things that Lexaeus excelled at. He was the Organization's best in hand-to-hand combat, was an exceptional horticulturalist, and would fill out the bass line of a choir nicely (provided he had imbibed the sheer volume of alcohol it would take to get him to sing, of course). However, he was quickly finding that gummi ship creation was not proving to be another talent of his.

He slammed down the Thunder-G he had been trying to weld to the side of his fledgling spacecraft. The yard had pre-made ships, of course, but they were either far outside of his price range or had cockpits that would have required him to remove a few limbs to fit. And thus, he had spent what remained of his munny on a pile of used parts that the violently blond man running the place had insisted was the standard "Build-Your-Own" kit. He probably should have begun being worried when Cid had peered over the counter at him and then thrown in a roll of duct tape.

Lexaeus groaned quietly and wiped the grease off with his old Organization cloak. He probably should have just stolen one of the luxury craft and been done with it, but he had the feeling that Cid was the type of mechanic that could remotely activate the self-destruct before he got out of orbit. And besides, there was something kind of dirty about adding to Radiant Garden's crime rate. Time was, he would have cheerfully leveled the city if the Superior ordered him to, but something rankled about the idea of simple theft. (Incidentally, this was reason why the Organization let a Moogle set up shop in their castle, as opposed stealing his wares and holding him hostage until he would agree to synthesize for free. They may have been evil, but there had to be _standards_.)

Fortunately, Cid poked his head in the door of the hangar, interrupting this protracted bout of navel gazing.

"You need a hand in here?" he asked, cigarette dangling crookedly from his mouth.

"Actually, I could use some help with the name, if you have a moment."

Cid walked over to the ship and began to inspect it, occasionally stopping to chuckle or to nudge a wayward block back into place. He finally said "Well, it'll fly, but the weapons aren't aligning with one another, and it's going to handle like a one-legged Chocobo."

"And the name?" Lexaeus asked, attempting to snap the man out of whatever mechanical stupor he had gone into.

"Could use another thruster as well, though that'd be a surcharge- oh, the name?" Cid laughed, slapping the side of the ship and causing several undoubtedly crucial components to tinkle to the ground inside the cockpit. "You want a name for this hunk of scrap? Heck, just look at it and name it the first thing that comes into your head."

And thus, several minutes later, the R.G.S Bastardess (the suffix hastily painted on after Lexaeus remembered ships were supposed to be female) went hurtling into the sky, leaving a trail of exhaust and badly duct-taped parts behind it. Radiant Garden was spread beneath him like a canvas, and for the first time, he truly appreciated how much time had passed since he'd last been a Somebody. _Good grief, they tore down Maximillian's. And they- they turned my old house into apartments. The buffoons. Now even more people are going to have to deal with those floors that collapse if you walk too heavily- PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP!_

Lexaeus pulled up, narrowly avoiding a collision with the Gummi equivalent of a yacht. And as the pilots of said yacht began screaming at him and turning their ship to expose an impressive array of Aeroga-Gs, he decided it would be prudent to get the hell out of town. He was trying to get home, after all. Darkness knows how long this scrap heap of his would last.

"Computer", he said, while frantically avoiding the cannon fire whizzing past the cockpit, "set a course for the Dwarf Woodlands."


End file.
